Past and Future Land Use/Land Cover Changes in the Ethiopian Fincha Sub-Basin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The proposal of changes and improvements:

- Part 2.1 - The study area should be described using geographical factors affecting LULC ( urban areas, industry etc.); also, the size of the study area is missing.

- Part 2.2 - Authors must describe the field survey in more detail.

- Part 2.3 - The selection of the concrete six LULC classes should be justified.

- Part 2.4 - The selection of the driving variables should be justified.

- Part 3.5 - How were the Cramer's V values obtained?

- For readers not familiar with the study area, the fundamental objects (for example, Nashe Dam or Amerti reservoir) affecting LULC changes should be identified in the maps.

- The section on Kappa statistics is repeated several times in the article.

- Table 6 must be reformated.

- Figure 3 - The use of a stacked bar chart will be much more understandable.

- Figure 5 - Consider using the same colour for LULC types as in maps (Figure 4).

- Page 13 - The error in referencing.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

please find our feedback in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is interesting, topical and addresses a relevant theme for practice. The paper investigated the historical LULC in the Ethiopian Fincha watershed via a combination of satellite imagery and field support data. Based on such analysis, the Land Change Modeller was applied to forecast LULC in the next three decades to 2050. The paper also examines the impact of objective policy /scale information on the importance of safeguarding water resources and ecosystem services at the basin scale. The paper's topic and research question are relevant to land journal readers. The authors explain the research questions very clearly and the research methodology is sound. The findings are also very interesting and clearly presented. However, I have some reservations. Most importantly, the current literature review on the correlation between natural human factor integration and land use/land cover changes is rather narrow. In particular, the authors need to deepen empirical support and policy enlightenment which focused on land use/land cover changes and coordination mechanism. Specific recommendations are as follows.

1. The abstract needs to refine the research conclusions according to the research results and further refine the mechanism behind the phenomenon.

2. Table 1. definitely requires further development – classification accuracy is not clear. Please supply the documentary evidence of the calculation basis.

3. Line 375. The reduction of forest cover pointed out in the present study compares well with similar research performed at the Ethiopian level needs to be clear. It is suggested to add adduce evidence .

4. 2.2 Dataset. Landsat-5 TM (L5, for the years 1989 and 2004) and Landsat-8 OLI-TIRS (L8, for the year 2019) data, why choose these years? What is the relationship with the predicted year?

5. Table 3. In case it is possible, it would be necessary to further explain the driving variables that were considered in the LCM simulations.

6. Figure 4 show the results of the LULC maps for 2030, 2040 and 2050 were created via LCM. Based on the existing data, predict 2020, and then compare the accuracy or reliability of the prediction. Conclusion part requires further development especially according to policy recommendations.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

we would like to thank you very much for your constructive comments.

Please find our feedback in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In this manuscript, the Authors focused on historical land use and land cover changes and future land use and land cover changes patterns in Fincha River sub-basin, Ethiopia (Africa). The manuscript is well-structured. The method is rooted in scientific basis but needs to be supplemented with additional details. The main concerns of this reviewer relate to the concluding remarks. I would like to ask the Authors to address the issues listed in the detailed report below.

Detailed report

Abstract, lines (L.) 8-9: “from land use land cover (LULC)”: please check.

Page (P.) 3, Figure 1: please consider providing a genuine high-quality image.

P. 4, L. 125-126: “GIS and Remote Sensing Department, Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy of Ethiopia”. Please consider adding the full reference in bibliography.

P. 4, Table 1: please consider adding adequate description of the columns in the caption.

P. 5, L. 177: please check.

P. 5, L. 195: “TerrSet validation module”. What is the “TerrSet validation module”? I would suggest the Authors provide a brief description of it.

P. 8, L. 252-257: “The accuracy of […] classified according to field evidence”. These details should be part of the method. I would suggest the Authors move this paragraph -or a reworded version of it- to section “2. Materials and Methods”.

P. 8, L. 255: “real futures”. Is it correct?

P. 9, L. 278-281: “The results presented here are in line with the existing literature on LULC in the Fincha watershed [15,36]. All the authors agreed that the shifting from natural LULC towards more anthropized environments could threaten biodiversity and decrease the total values of ecosystem services [63]”. This part could be part of the Discussion (Section 4).

P. 10, L. 287-288: “The probability transitional matrix is the transfer direction of Land Use Land Cover types from one category to other categories in the given year [10]”. This part should be included in the description of the method.

P. 10, L. 321-323: “To corroborate the results presented here and to reduce the uncertainties, additional data should be included in the study, mostly deriving from laborious and expensive field investigations”. This appears to be a limitation of the study. I would suggest the Authors remark the limitations of the study in Section “4. Discussion and Policy implications” and/or in Section “5. Conclusions”.

P. 11, Table 8. The Authors refer to “Multi-Layer Perceptron”. However, this reviewer did not find any references to “Multi-Layer Perceptron” in the description of the method. I would suggest the Authors clearly introduce and describe the “Multi-Layer Perceptron” in the method.

P. 13, L. 375: “[Error! Reference source no …”. Please check.

Section “5. Conclusions”. This section appears to be weak in terms of interest to the international reader. I would like to ask the Authors to address these issues: what is the research question that the Authors face in this work (please also clarify this in Section “1. Introduction”)? What is the answer to the research question? Why is this study important for international scholars? What is the novelty of the study compared to what is already known? What are the lessons learned, which can be exported to other international contexts? What are the limitations of the study and method? What are the future lines of research suggested to overcome the current limitations of the study?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

we would like to thank you for the time spent revising our work.

Attached you can find our detailed feedback, while we integrated your comments in the revised version.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The Authors improved the manuscript. However, They seem to have ignored the following comments:

“Page (P.) 3, Figure 1: please consider providing a genuine high-quality image.

We have updated Figure 1”.

Figure 1 includes an image belonging to Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (Figure 1a). Could the Authors provide a genuine and high-quality image produced by themselves?

“P. 4, L. 125-126: “GIS and Remote Sensing Department, Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy of Ethiopia”. Please consider adding the full reference in bibliography.

We cannot provide a full reference, as the DEM was just acquired from the office”.

As for the full reference (e.g., website), this reviewer was referring to  “Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy of Ethiopia”.

“P. 5, L. 195: “TerrSet validation module”. What is the “TerrSet validation module”? I would suggest the Authors provide a brief description of it.

We improved the text by adding a short description of the TerrSet validation module, as well as the proper references”.

This reviewer did not find the short description of the TerrSet validation module. Could you please reveal such an integration in the main text?

This comment has been ignored by the Authors: “Section “5. Conclusions”. This section appears to be weak in terms of interest to the international reader. I would like to ask the Authors to address these issues: what is the research question that the Authors face in this work (please also clarify this in Section “1. Introduction”)? What is the answer to the research question? Why is this study important for international scholars? What is the novelty of the study compared to what is already known? What are the lessons learned, which can be exported to other international contexts? What are the limitations of the study and method? What are the future lines of research suggested to overcome the current limitations of the study?”

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

we would like to thank you again for the comments.

We hope that the present version could be ok with you, and we remain open to further improving our manuscript to accommodate your requests.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx